


A Game of Give and Take

by zarabithia



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron, Canon Disabled Character, F/M, Fix-It, aou fix it, canon child abuse, canon rape reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 19:22:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4576755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarabithia/pseuds/zarabithia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Nathaniel Pietro is born, Clint and Kate receive a call from the current Hawkeye requesting them to come visit their grandson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Game of Give and Take

**Author's Note:**

> All countlessuntruths‘ fault. Contains reference to canonical sexual assault, and random cameos from the Young Avengers who do not owe their existence to Wanda Maximoff. If you don’t know that the title comes from “Can’t Hurry Love,” you break my heart.

**2015, Brooklyn**

The rain wakes him up.

He has a memory, increasingly distant, of what rain used to actually sound like. He remembers Iowa thunderstorms and the way the claps used to frighten him, until Barney took it upon himself to take Clint out to collect frogs in the middle of a thunderstorm.

“If you’re looking for frogs, you’ll forget about the storm,” Barney had said, and he’d been right, because hunched over the pond, two miles away from their house, all Clint had wanted to focus on was catching the frog before his brother did. There, at that pond, Clint was able to first ignore, and then relish, the roll of the thunder that was much more quiet than the roar at home.

But it’s been almost fifteen years since Barney’s death, and even longer since Clint’s been able to hear a storm announce its presence.

The rain still wakes him up, though.

It wakes him because their bedroom window is open. They both chill too easily these days for the damn air conditioner, but it’s too hot in early June to go without a little air at night.

(Too hot for him; Katie still sleeps with four blankets pulled around her, the top layer having been a gift from Ellie’s oldest daughter two Christmases ago.)

The smell of the rain hitting the rooftop garden that Simone still supervises on her more mobile days is what wakes him up. Once you’ve lived in Iowa and gone frog hunting, there are some terrible things you can’t shake, like the smell of wet dirt.

As terrible as wet dirt does smell - and the new fru fru organic shit the neighborhood garden is using smells even worse - it lets him wake up a fraction before Katie does.

The arthritis has to make it agonizing to sleep facing him - that busted knee from ‘91 hates the rain more than Clint’s busted hip hates the cold. But she’s curled up to face him, close enough to kiss, and he takes a moment to count the liver spots that have taken over for the freckles that used to be so noticeable when they were this close.

He’s still lying there, watching her breathe and thinking if the rain is going to interfere with their previous plans to stop by Barney’s grave before their regularly scheduled (more or less) Sunday catch-ups with the Alleyne-Altman brood when Katie wakes up. She looks exasperated when she wakes up, and that is Clint’s first clue that the phone is ringing.

It’s the cellphone she keeps by the bed, not the house phone that Clint will always insist on having, and she’s disconnecting the call by the time that Clint’s tired bones have allowed him to reach over and put his hearing aides in.

“Well, she finally had baby number three,” Katie tells him when he turns to her expectantly. “One too many if you ask me, but it’s not my uterus, I suppose.”

“Great. When are they coming to visit?” He means it. There’s literally no reason for the grandparents to travel half-way across the country, when the young and sprightly could do it just as well.

But Katie fixes him with a look. “I’ll book us a ticket,” she tells him. “You start packing.”

“I’m too old to have to go to Iowa, Katie,” he whines, a little petulantly, because if anything deserves it, it’s Iowa.

“We are going to visit our son’s son,” Kate informs him.

“Why? It’s not like it’s his first son. They already had one.”

“Because we flew to London last September, when Ellie had her fourth daughter,” Kate answers. “You’re just going to have to deal with it, Old Man.”

“Fine. What did they name him, anyway?”

“Nathaniel Pietro.”

“That’s the worst fucking name I’ve ever heard,” Clint complains. “The kid has been complaining about being named Clinton Francis Jr. for more than 40 years now, and he goes and names his son that?”

“I believe Laura had something to do with it, too,” Katie tells him.

Clint just sighs and goes to feed the dog who gives the kind of groan that can approximately be translated into “Ugh, Iowa.”

Dogs are great like that.

~

**1942, Iowa**

Clint is eight years old when their father goes away to war.  It’s an ordinary day, though it feels like it should be extraordinary. Their parents talk about it for weeks, in angry tones that alternate in volume; sometimes he can understand the words coming through the thin farmhouse walls, and other times, his imagination fills in the details of the muffled yelling.

But when the day comes, his father’s voice is just as loud as it’s always been. It’s just as angry. It still makes Clint want to simultaneously run into the living room to tell him to shut up and run into his closet to get away from that voice.

Clint doesn’t do either; he also doesn’t go with their mom to the train station.  

“Barney’s old enough to watch the brat and we don’t have time,” their father insists.

“I hate him,” Clint mutters rebelliously as he stares out of the living room window and watches their father pull out of the driveway. He doesn’t cry, because he’s a big boy, and big boys don’t cry in the day time.

(Sometimes they do at night time; at least, Barney does, so Clint figures it’s okay if he does too.)  

Barney’s fingers are already on the radio they aren’t allowed to touch when he answers Clint. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and he won’t come back.”

The announcer cuts into Clint’s reply to compare the chances of the Cardinals and the Dodgers at the World Series, and Clint turns away from the window.

~

**1958, New York**

Kate is not, technically, supposed to have the The Music Man poster. It is, technically, supposed to still be hanging on the wall that she had taken the time to liberate it from when her parents weren’t looking.  But in her defense, the  Majestic Theatre is huge. It is hardly going to miss one little poster.

“It’s still stealing, Katherine,” her mother says as Kate leans in the doorway of her parents’ bedroom, the poster firmly folded up and held against her chest.

“Grandma says you’re going to Europe to do illegal things,” Kate says, sticking her chin up and holding the poster a little more tightly. “If you can be a criminal, so can I.”

Her mother sighs and unzips another suitcase. “Your grandmother is not exactly being truthful. Peaceful protests are not illegal - even when they say things that nobody wants to hear.”

Kate takes the time to consider that her mother’s attention has changed from the illegally obtained poster to grandmother’s activities before Kate too changes tactics. “If it isn’t illegal, why can’t I go?”

“You have school.”

“You’ve let me miss before.”

It’s a good argument, and the fact that it is can be seen in the slight scowl that her mother tosses in her direction. It’s the kind of scowl that would have earned Susan a well-placed comment about not sassing back.

Their mother never tells Kate not to sass back; that is one lost cause Eleanor Bishop knows better than to take up.

“Because the … ” her mother pauses only for a minute while she takes shirts out of the dresser drawers, and Kate walks over to the bed. She sits beside the open suitcase, poster still tightly within her grasp.

“It’s dangerous,” Kate says, and it is not a question.

Kate asks the question to her mother’s back, and her mother’s back straightens in reply. She comes over to the suitcase, folding the blouse as she goes. “It has the potential to be, yes - certainly more than a twelve year old needs to see. The business of making bombs is something a lot of powerful people want to protect, and the Campaign has angered them. But cheer up, sweetie. I hardly think there’s going to be a full on riot. Britain enjoys their veneer of civilization far to much to allow that.”

“If it’s so dangerous, I don’t see why you can’t stay here and have a protest here,” Kate argues as more of her mother’s blouses find their way into the suitcase. They are different than the stiff, formal dresses her mother wears to work at Bishop Publishing. The dark blue, high-neck, and long sleeves of the work outfits have been replaced by short sleeves, scooped neckline, lavendar, and white.

“Because, my Katherine, when you want to win a fight, you have to go to the place where the battle is actually taking place. If Captain America had stayed in New York, would he have ever defeated the Red Skull?”

“David says Steve Rogers was a propaganda tool and probably would have been against the Brown decision,” Kate informs her mother.  "And Chavez says he wasn’t even the first Captain America.“

Kate trusts them both, of course. David makes 3rd period study hall and 7th period lunch so much more bearable, and America is great fun to argue with whenever their three mothers get together to protest something terrible. Kate wonders if America’s mothers are going to Britain too; maybe Kate will call and ask. If so, America will likely know more about the exact level of dangerous that Kate’s family sometimes still thinks Kate needs protected from.

"That sounds like something you should research while I’m in Britain,” her mother tells her.

“I’ll miss you,” Kate answers back, her voice sounding much more small than she would have liked. “But I suppose researching the tragic, racist past of an American icon will get me through until you return.”

The suitcase closes and her mother kneels down in front of Kate. “I’ll miss you too, and your sister and your father. But this is important. While your research is also important … try to remember to have some fun while I’m gone, sweetie.” She eyes the poster Kate still has in her grasp. “Maybe your father can take you and Susan to another show. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d like to keep the poster more,” Kate says defiantly.

There’s a short pause before her mother nods. “Just this once,” she says.

Kate hums a little to herself as she hangs the poster up on her wall, the voice of the famed Boadway actress Angie Martinelli ringing loudly in her ears. //“Chip on the shoulder attitude we’ve never been without that we recall. … And we’re so by God stubborn we can stand touchin’ noses for a week at a time, and never see eye to eye.” //

~

**1946, Iowa**

Clint is eleven years old when he tells his father that he wishes he’d never come back from the war.

On the bright side, it’s the last night that Clint ever has to listen to The Captain America Adventure Hour.

~

**1962, New York**

The house is almost empty. Susan is gone to college. Dad is gone to work. Mom is … gone.

There are servants, of course, but they’re under strict orders to allow Kate time to “process” and “deal” with what’s happened, and nobody much likes coming in the Bishop master bedroom since her mother passed away.

But there is someone in the room with her, and she sits on the floor, hand extended on the bed in an open palm, just in case Kate feels like taking it.

Kate doesn’t at the moment. She feels bad about that, and then she feels angry about feeling bad because it’s not her fault that she feels miserable and angry all the time.

There’s only one person responsible, and fuck him.

“Fuck him,” she repeats, aloud this time, and she wants it to sound like an angry battle cry, like the protestors on tv that make her father tsk in disapproval. She wants to channel the anger she has seen from America’s moms and from her own.

But it comes out small and broken and wrapped up in a sob.

“Fuck him,” America echoes, and she has the power Kate doesn’t; it’s angry, furious - the woman they both want to be, someday. The strength they’ve both admired and Kate thought she had, but didn’t, as it turns out.

Kate pulls her knees more tightly to her chest and winces at the physical pain that hasn’t quite healed.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” America says during a silence that isn’t punctuated by choked back sobs.

“You couldn’t have done anything,” Kate says, and her voice sounds so small in the huge room. She hates it. She never wants to feel this small again or this helpless - though she knows it is possible to feel even more helpless than she currently does.

“I could have punched him,” America declares and it sounds like a vow. The way America’s extended hand curls into a fist makes it even more of one.

“Or you could have gotten hurt too,” Kate says, and the idea is even worse than the reality of what’s happened, so she reaches forward and takes America’s fist into hers.

Kate doesn’t want to anyone else hurt. Not ever again.

America looks a little startled at first, but then she says, “I know I’m not the person you want to be here, princess. But - you’re not alone. You aren’t ever going to be. You don’t have to be.”

It’s not a declaration that fixes anything. But it is enough to make things a bit more bearable, and at the moment, that’s all Kate can hope for.

~

**1951, Carson Carnival of Traveling Wonders**

Used to be, the Swordsman and Trick Shot only had one show each day. Clint knows this, not because anyone’s tried to tell him that, but because he’s seen the old posters. They’re okay posters, but Clint thinks their costumes could have used a little more flavor. It’s a circus, for pity’s sake. He’s sure that the Howling Commandos looked more colorful than those two did, and the Commandos were slinking through the mud to punch Nazis.

“We’ll leave the tights to the kid,” Clint reads on their lips, and he doesn’t mind because their own posters look fantastic. Mostly because of his amazing costume, but also because these days, The World’s Greatest Marksman joins Trick Shot and the Swordsman for three shows a night.

Clint’s exhausted by the end of the last one, and his arm muscles ache. But they ache less than they did three years ago when he was first learning, so he ignores them. Some day, maybe, they won’t  ache at all. Someday, when his muscles catch up to The World’s Greatest Marksman.

Anyway, Barney is waiting for him after the last show with the last hotdog of the night and an elephant ear that is completely lacking in any sugar.  Clint takes both gratefully, and has half of the hot dog already stuffed in his mouth by the time Barney starts talking again.

Clint pays his brother about half of his attention. But he has to take his eyes off of Barney’s face to eat, so even that half the conversation is somewhat lost to Clint.

He’ll pay attention later. Barney isn’t going anywhere, after all, and they’ll be plenty of time after shows later to pay attention to whatever it is that has Barney so animated tonight.

~

**1964, California**

“I did not send you to Berkeley so that you could waste my money by - ”

Kate hangs up.

Really, what else is she supposed to do? Her father wants to have a conversation about “wasting” his money by taking part in protests and Kate does not have the time nor the patience to have the conversation.

She also doesn’t have the desire to stand next to the phone and listen to her father complain; she’s pretty sure she tore a muscle … or a tendon … or a nerve … or something vital to having free movement in her left leg when she underestimated the drop from the roof the night before.

Or maybe it’s from Tuesday.  America’s catches are sometimes almost as rough as hitting the ground would be.

Maybe it’s from last Sunday. Teddy’s flights are lighter than America’s hands, but Virginia is a cesspool, and the jackass trying to burn down the small grocery store got in a lucky shot.

Not as lucky as Kate’s three shots, though.

When the phone rings again, she assumes right away it’s her dad to continue his lecture. Her first words are not kind ones.

“Listen, I am going to do exactly what I fucking please, and if you don’t like it, that’s too bad. And you can take your money and shove it, because it’s never done any of the women in our family any good when it really mattered, has it?”

It’s a low blow, even for her at her angriest. And the pause in conversation is one that she attributes to her viciousness.

But then the voice on the other end speaks.

“I don’t have any money to spoil you with, princess.”

“Chavez,” Kate says, letting out a deep breath and flopping onto the dorm’s bed, which is an act she regrets as soon as her left leg hits the mattress. “What’s the deal?”

“I found a Bradley,” Chavez sing-songs.

“David’s going to be so pleased. Miss Tucker is not going to be.”

“Yeah. It’s not The Isaiah Bradley, but David’s still on his way to be amazed. You should come too. ”

“Where are you?”

“Mississippi. I figure, you can put some of that anger of yours to good use, princess.”

Kate doesn’t have to be asked twice.

~

**1954, The Raymond and Hammond Traveling Carnivale of Wonders**

Barney’s been gone for two years, and the twinge in his leg every time that it rains is the only reminder that Clint has of his old circus. A great parting gift it had been from his old pals, Jacques and Chisholm.

He’s still billed as the Amazing Hawkeye, because fuck them if they think they can take that away from him. He doesn’t have to share the stage with any other archers and he’s pretty sure he’s not imagining the fact that the applause last longer.

He knows he isn’t imagining the fact that his shot is better. The Robin Hood Shot is impossible, they say? Not for the Amazing Hawkeye, it’s not.

But the circus is smaller, and so are the crowds. These days, the Amazing Hawkeye is expected to pull double duty by shoveling elephant dung on his “breaks.”

It’s better than pulling double duty by stealing, the way he’d been expected to before, Clint tells himself.

He has a shovel in hand and his quiver slung casually over his shoulder when he arrives at Georgetta’s cage. There’s a new visitor there, though, a woman who looks far too classy to be even a townie visiting this circus. And all the pep talks that Clint has given himself about how this is better than what Barney, Jacques, and Chisholm wanted him to be … well, they don’t do a whole lot to make him not feel about two inches tall.

“Look, lady, I appreciate you being a fan. But I don’t have time to sign autographs.”

The woman nods as though it is a serious conversation, instead of one taking place next to an ornery elephant in a traveling circus ain’t nobody ever heard of. Then she says, “Yes, it certainly looks as though Georgetta’s had her fill of peanuts today. Perhaps a bit too much if the … pile is to judge by.”

Clint grits his teeth and marches right past her, opening up the gate and ignoring her on purpose. He has a job to do and he’s gonna do it so he can get back to practicing something he actually cares about later.

The woman doesn’t take the hint, and keeps talking. “You know, for a young man who is pretending not to like attention very much, you aren’t very good at keeping a low profile, Mister Barton.”

Clint gives Georgetta’s trunk a soft pet - it calms her down - and thinks about turning away from the strange woman, so the temptation to read her lips is less. In fact, he starts to, but then the woman moves, so she’s in front of him again.

She can’t know. He doesn’t just advertise that he can’t hear. And Hammond and Raymond, they’re hopelessly boring losers with a shitty circus, but they’d never squeal on him.

But he stands up and looks at her full in the face while he leans on the shovel. “I’m in a circus. Not the best place to stay out of sight, lady.”

“The Swordsman and Trick Shot thought differently, though, didn’t they?” Clint’s surprise must have shown on his face, because her expression softened somewhat, and Clint figures that her voice probably does the same. “I run an organization responsible for catching internationally wanted criminals. Your friends have … graduated somewhat from scamming the local tourists.”

“I haven’t seen them in two years,” Clint says defensively. “So whatever it is you’re trying to charge me with, lady, I’ve been here the whole time.”

“Except for the two weeks you were in the hospital; yes, I know. I’m not trying to charge you with anything,  Mister Barton.”

“Then you’re here why? To get some weird kick out of watching me shovel elephant shit for my dinner? You were bored with your super impressive job that I don’t give a fuck about? What possible reason would bring you to the middle of nowhere to talk to me if you don’t want to lock me up?”

She looks at him in a way that nobody ever else actually has. It’s not regular disappointment; he’s known that. He excels in disappointing people, after all. But this is the special kind of disappointment of someone who actually expected better of him.

It throws Clint for a loop that the Flying Munroes would be fucking amazed at.

“I am here, Mister Barton, because a man I once valued used to say that 'the strong man who has known power all his life may lose respect for that power, but a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion.’ I’ve been watching you, Mister Barton, and listening to the testimonies of your friends. Despite your … general irritability, I feel that Dr. Erskine would have smiled favorably upon you.”

“Erskine was the doctor who gave Captain America his steroids, right?” Clint says, and for the first time, she scowls at him.

“He developed the super soldier program, yes,” and the way she places her hands on her hips makes it clear that she isn’t happy.

“Yeah, yeah, my old man was a big fan of the radio show. Red, white, and wholesome was never a story I bought into,” Clint retorts. “Look, lady, I still don’t know why you are here or quoting  Dr. Erskine, but in case you haven’t noticed? Take a good look around. Captain America ain’t anywhere near here.”

“No, he isn’t,” she agrees. “But regardless of that fa t, I am here to offer you a job because sometimes, Mister Barton, we must make the best of what life gives us and let go of the things that it chose not to.”

To be honest, that was enough to get Clint to say yes to almost any job she would have offered.

But later, he tells her that it was the Stark hearing aids that sealed the deal. Director Carter pretends to believe him, because she’s a good sport that way.

~

**1966, New York**

It is possible, Kate will concede, that she had made some enemies while in California. Possible, in fact, because the entire reason she’d come back to New York in the first place had been to go with Susan to Cheetah for one last hurrah before the big wedding to tall, dark, and boring-enough-to-meet-daddy’s approval, but the nightclub had been postponed every night for two weeks for less daddy-approved activities.

As if her father knew. Everyone knew the age of Supehreroes had died with Steve Rogers, and her father was the last person to believe that Kate was capable of holding her own with the types of people who could have held their own with the probable Second Captain America.

Speaking of teams, Kate is thinking about calling her teammates so that she can survive long enough to actually be the bridesmaid to her sister’s wedding. It sounds like a good idea, so much so that she is willing to accept the inevitable “I told you sos” that will no doubt come from both Bradley and Chavez.

But before she has time to make her way to a telephone booth, some guy in a purple mask and loin cloth shows up shooting arrows at the 'friends’ Kate made in California.

He looks more like he belongs in her sister’s nightclub than he does fighting for Madam Masque, but he’s apparently in her corner, so Kate isn’t going to complain.

When the dust settles, he saunters over to her like Teddy’s cat does when it has brought home a particularly juicy half-dead mouse.

“You alright, girly girl?”

“I guess that probably depends on why you just happened to show up for a team-up,” Kate answers. Her hand is still wrapped firmly around her bow and the time it will take to lift and shoot can be measured in seconds.

He’s probably quicker on the draw. But not by much. Give her a few years, she’ll be better.

But he gives a slow, easy grin, which would look suave if only it hadn’t been followed up with a wince as the split in his lip registered to his brain.

Either way, the deadliness he’d waged in battle a minute ago isn’t as apparent and while most of the men Kate trusts have been in her life for years, she’s willing to admit that this one doesn’t give her the initial urge to shoot and ask questions later.

So many do.  She doesn’t do it, of course, because she’s not a supervillain, but the crawly urge beneath her skin is usually there.

“I was coming to fight you, actually,” he says casually. “Got distracted.”

The arrow is up before his, actually. “You want a fight? You sure about that? Pretty sure that arm of yours is busted in at least two spots.”

His arrow stays at his side and the blond of his brows plays peekaboo beneath his mask as his eyes widen and then frown.

“I just wanted to see what you could do. I hear there’s an archer hanging around, kicking supervillian ass. That’s kind of stealing my gig there.”

“Is this the part where I am supposed to know who the hell you are?”

“You’ve never heard of me?” The man placed a hand on his chest, where other people’s hearts are, and his probably are too, somewhere underneath all of those muscles that strain against the fabric of his shirt rebelliously. “The Amazing Hawkeye, at your service.”

The last three places that Kate has bought a bow have a poster of The Amazing Hawkeye. Kate can name both of the circuses that he has been in, and she can finally place the vague midwestern accent as one belonging to Iowa.

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” she tells him instead.

“And to think, I’ve heard so much about you, Katie.”

Of course he knows who she is. David is right. She’s complete shit at having a secret identity.

But god, “Katie” is worse than “princess.”

“From Masque?” She demands. Then a bit more reluctantly, “Or someone else?”

There are other options in the list of people Kate has pissed off, after all. Maybe even an alien or two, but she sure as hell isn’t telling her circus friend that information.

“Someone else?’” Hawkeye laughs and asks, “How many enemies do you even have in California?”

“A few. It wasn’t the best time of my life.”

“Yeah, I’ve been there. It stinks. Could be worse. You could have been stuck in Iowa.”

~

**2015, The Barton Farm**

“Iowa,” Clint sighs the minute the car pulls up to the farmhouse. It’s louder than he intents it to be, and their son hears them.

He pretends not to, just the same as Clint used to pretend not to hear all the fights between his children when they were small.

Kate hears, though, and pinches his elbow.

“You’ll have to forgive the kids. They’ve been a bit wired up since the Avengers visited,” Junior says as he put the car in park. The car turns off and on too silently for Clint’s liking, but all cars are like that these days.

If cars were going to lose their style and their roar, the least they could have done is actually turn into flying cars. Clint thinks he could go dig up Howard Stark and give him a good kick in the ass for not following through on that one.

Maybe he could just go kick his son’s ass instead. A Stark is a Stark, after all. Apples never fall all that far from a tree. That’s why their son is a crime fighting archer and their daughter teaches self defense and gender studies. And that’s why Howard Stark’s son is probably a rich asshole.

“My grandchildren are perfect and there is nothing to forgive them for,” Kate tells him sternly. “Certainly nothing that I haven’t already had to forgive their father and grandfather for, I’m sure.”

“Ouch, Mom,” Junior says, but Clint laughs and pointedly picks up his own luggage.

“Let me get that, Dad,” Junior says.

“I was killing international spies for twenty years before you were born, and many years after you stopped wetting the bed,” Clint tells his son. “I can carry my own damn luggage.”

And he does, even if his middle finger shakes and the pain shoots from his pinkie all the way up to his shoulder blade.

He makes it to the front porch, even though Junior is grumbling unintelligible nonsense the whole way there. He sets the luggage down on the porch just in time to be engulfed by two tiny sets of arms that have absolutely no consideration for his old and tired bones.

They are, other than Katie, his favorite people at the moment.

“ _Grandma Katie! Grandpa Clint! Guess what? We had guests! We’re not allowed to tell anyone but you don’t count, right?”_

_“Of course they don’t count, dummy. They used to fight bad guys.”_

_“Yeah, you were Avengers before the Avengers, right, Grandma Katie?”_

_“That’s how you met Grandpa Clint, wasn’t it, Grandma Katie?”_

Grandma Katie does not have much time to answer, because the tiny hands clinging to his waist abandon him in favor of dragging their grandmother into the farmhouse.

He can’t make out everything, but there is laughter, Laura’s cheerful voice, a faint baby cry, and murmurs of a conversation from the other side of the screen door.

Clint stands on the porch, next to their son. “Avengers or not, I hope you take time to enjoy all this noise. It won’t last forever. Bad guys, on the other hand, they won’t ever go away.”

Their children always turn to look at him when they speak; it’s a habit they’ve picked up from their mother. It’s one of the few Clint can blame on Kate that she can’t say “Oh, please, it isn’t as though you didn’t teach them the same thing.”

It has, over the years, been her favorite parenting retort.

“Family lasts forever, too, Dad,” Junior says.

Ellie’s the fun kid. That’s why she moved to Europe and their son has a farmhouse in Iowa. Because he’s always so damn serious.

A bad habit he picked up from his aunts and uncles, Clint thinks uncharitably.

“The Avengers  - they make you happy? They’re a good team?” Clint asks. “That’s important, Francis. Having a good team in this life makes all the difference.”

“I know.” When the kids smile, Clint always thinks of Kate, and he doesn’t know if it’s because they look like her or because their smiles make him so happy. “Being a superhero is amazing and if you’re very lucky, you won’t have to do it alone. Isn’t that what mom always says?”

“If I couldn’t argue with that advice when you used it as justification to bring home an assassin, how am I going to argue with it now?”

“Why argue with mom, anyway? She’s perfect.” Junior claps him gently on the shoulder, and Clint pretends he doesn’t feel it all the way down to his toes. “Come inside when you’re done cursing at the barn, okay?

Clint stands on the porch for a minute, remembering catching frogs, not being fast enough to duck fists, and barns of temporary parents that hadn’t been any better than his original set. He remembers being able to hear the radio show that promised the kind of adventure he’d been sure he’d never find in Iowa.

He’d been right about that, Clint thinks smugly, before he joins the rest of the family in the farmhouse.


End file.
